This seminar will present how Dr Ben Hopper’s thesis explains why people are getting patents over traditional medical knowledge in a way that differs from (and adds to) the usual explanations for China’s “patent boom”. These “usual (explanatory) suspects” are based on State interference (patenting subsidies, etc.), level of innovation and level of human capital. It will draw on his original fieldwork data comprising a survey of the approaches to patenting of 53 mostly ethnic minority traditional medical practitioners in China’s southwestern, relatively poor and isolated province of Guizhou. The analysis of those data involved a mixture of qualitative and quantitative methods. The seminar will conclude that a key (and, thus far, missing) ingredient in explaining patenting activity in China is the individual’s extent of marketisation, with more marketised individuals having a statistically significant higher propensity to get patents and to obey patent laws.

About the speaker

Dr Ben Hopper is a lecturer at Melbourne Law School. He teaches and researches in the areas of intellectual property, traditional knowledge, technology law, civil procedure, and legal ethics. He examines doctrinal developments in these areas of law, with a focus on intellectual property law. His research uses empirical methods to illuminate the “living law”, including people’s lived experiences of the law, and legal subjectivity. He draws on both legal theory and broader social theory to explain the results of his empirical research.

Ben’s current research focus is China, the locus of his PhD on patenting of traditional knowledge, and where he has completed projects on geographical indications in the tea industry and internal migration in Xinjiang. He has a J.D., B.A. (Hons), and D-Lang (German) from the University of Melbourne, and an LL.M. from Harvard University.

Commentator: Dr Olugbenga Olatunji (University of Sydney Law School)

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Monday 2 September, 2024

Time: 1-2pm

Venue: Common Room, Level 4, New Law Building (F10), Eastern Avenue, University of Sydney, Camperdown campus

CPD Points: 1 point

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This event is co-sponsored by the Centre for Asian and Pacific Law and the Ross Parsons Centre.